Guy Adams - The Clown Service

‘Hello?’ he called. At least that was what the word had looked like when it had been in his head, by the time it fell out of his drunken, slack mouth it was entirely different. A useless, incomprehensible thing fat with vowels. The scrabbling continued undeterred until, with a larger sound of spilling earth, a shadow bled out across the street-lit sky right in front of Jimmy’s eyes.

‘Big for a badger,’ he said, just before the stench of an open grave washed over him.

Then the large shadow picked up a hefty stone and beat his skull in.

a) Shad Thames, London

The Fear never really hit me until 2008. I’m not talking about being scared; I’ve been that many times in my life, not least during that spring in Basra when the air was filled with fire and the world a place of smoke and the dead. I’m talking about The Fear. It has capitals. It has teeth.

Looking back on it, I wonder if it was always there. I suppose it must have been. But 2008 is when I met it head on. 2008 is when I gave it a name. I was back in the UK, my life intact, despite formidable odds. I had received a psychiatric evaluation after Basra that had flagged up a possibility of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Naturally, I had denied it. I didn’t want to admit there was anything wrong with me. I didn’t want to be seen as ‘weak’ (and yes, I am perfectly well aware now that suffering from PTSD is no such thing, but I couldn’t make myself believe it then).

I was no longer under threat. I was no longer being assaulted. I was simply watching the television in my apartment. One minute I was sitting on the sofa, idly contemplating ordering a takeaway, and the next I was hunched foetally on the floor in front of the TV, convinced the roof was about to crash down on me.

There is always the sense that the world is shrinking, compressing you. You know the sensation you feel when walking under an object that comes close to bashing your head? That tingle in the back of your skull that says, ‘Careful! You nearly misjudged that and smacked me with something large and painful.’ It’s like that. All the time. When there’s nothing around you. The world has grown teeth and it wants to sharpen them on you. No matter where you move you’re going to graze a knuckle, stub a toe, bend back a finger. Add to that the way the silence seems to roar at you. Everything your body would do in response to a deafening row, the wincing, the flinching, the sensory overload, the inner voice that begs for the sound to stop… all of that, but with no sound actually triggering it. The Fear is an attack without an attacker, being under siege with no external foe. And it’s been with me ever since.

Of course, I didn’t tell anyone. You don’t admit to weakness when you work in intelligence. These days my attacks are rarely so strong that I can’t grit my teeth and weather them until I can get somewhere private, take a few deep breaths and wait for things to settle down. They’d send me for ‘evaluation’. As if I wasn’t managing to sabotage my career just fine without adding that to my file. Was The Fear a problem? Yes. Of course it was. But it was my problem.

At that moment, with Shining gone and the sound of Derek’s machinery closing down around me, The Fear was back with a vengeance. So much so I had to take it outside.

The street seemed charged with danger: every step on the road felt insubstantial, as if the tarmac could simply vanish from beneath me at any moment; as if the whole world was a trap just waiting to snap shut on me. What was I going to do? Just what the fuck was I going to do?

I caught my breath enough to be able to deal with Derek, walking back in on a man who appeared in an equally bad state. ‘OK,’ I said, determined to give orders rather than converse. I couldn’t bear the thought of a conversation, which might entail questions whose answers would only make my state worse. ‘I need you to repair whatever needs repairing and be ready to go again if need be. Can you do that?’

‘Of course, but…’

‘Please. Just do that; I need you to do that.’ I gave him a business card with my mobile number on it.

‘It says your name’s Gerard.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘I bet it’s not Charlie Berry, either.’ He scribbled his own number on a supermarket receipt and handed it over.

‘Probably not. But it’ll do for now. I need to leave you to this, all right? I’m sorry but I need to run. I need to… Well, I need to.’

Derek held up his hand. ‘It’s fine. I understand. Do your thing. I’ll call you.’

I nodded and left, my hands twitching, my legs moving so fast I was in danger of losing my balance. I wanted to run, to run – and run – and run. To start screaming, to fill the rushing air with noise and anger and fear. I was a hair’s breadth from losing control. You’re probably judging me for that, yes? Writing me off as weak? Well, fuck you. I’ve seen things that would make your teeth bleed. Sometimes those things gang up on me, that’s all.

If Shining had gone missing on what could be termed a ‘normal’ mission (God knows what constitutes ‘normal’ in any branch of espionage, but you’ll admit it rarely involves time travel and living-dead Russians), there was a protocol to be followed, a plan to fall back on. But at that moment I was utterly lost. Barely a day old in the world of Section 37; I was no better than a tourist. I was suddenly the entirety of the section, with an unresolved countdown and a missing officer. I hadn’t a clue where to begin.

My only option was to let The Fear go, burn itself out, and let me think.

I headed towards the river, walking in circles. Eventually I sat myself down on a bench looking out towards Tower Bridge and breathed out the last of the poison that had filled me.

Life had become clearer. I was the only active member of the Section. I knew I could expect no support from outside my newly-inherited office. Either I would solve this problem or I wouldn’t. Anything else was just mental white noise. Compartmentalise. Tag the problems you can deal with and disregard the rest.

Next question: should I tell my superiors about Shining? It wasn’t a simple decision. On the one hand, of course I should . On the other… If this was the only section that had a chance of dealing with his disappearance, nothing would be gained by bumping the problem up the ladder. Also, the department would certainly face closure if Shining were lost, so I had to consider keeping it dark. What sold me was that I knew that’s what Shining would have wanted me to do. Keep my mouth shut for as long as possible. Keep it in house. Twenty-four hours and I was already offering him more faith and devotion than any other section head in my career. I couldn’t decide whether I felt proud or foolish about that. So I just went with my decision.

I had a book of agents, madmen all, and, given that countdown, about two days in which to put them to good use.

Fine.

b) High Road, Wood Green, London

The first step was to head back to the office. I needed to gather intel and think.

I stopped by Oman’s first, and was furious to find it closed. I needed the app he had given Shining on my phone. At that point I had no way of monitoring the numbers station. I didn’t even know the frequency; those details having been confined to the two of them. Realising that made me more angry, and I paced up and down High Road wanting to punch something. It would certainly have been Oman had I clapped eyes on him. However, it was another target that presented itself. I was standing in the middle of the bustling pedestrians, looking across the road at the entrance to the mall when I recognised a woman in the crowd – the one I had seen the day before, outside Euston Station. She had irritated me then, with her cockiness and her patronising attitude. I was fuming now. Certainly too angry to let her wander about unchallenged so close to the office. Had she been keeping an eye on us? Had she maybe even been in the building while we were out? I didn’t imagine Tamar would have taken kindly to that; she clearly took pride in keeping an eye on ‘her August’. I had certainly been treated with utter suspicion, but who knew?